


Runaway

by lilacsigil



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 11:23:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amelia Voght, a New York City nurse, can travel halfway around the world in a moment. Charles Xavier, a fellow mutant and one of her patients, wants her to help her own kind. Erik Lehnsherr wants her to fight for them. Amelia is not sure she sees a difference.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runaway

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to st_aurafina for beta reading.

Amelia would bring cigarettes to Charles's room late at night after her shift was finished, and they'd have a smoke together. To be more precise, she would smoke and occasionally let him have a drag: such a long time flat on his back left him at risk for pneumonia, so he wasn't supposed to smoke at all.

"They tried to diagnose me with all kinds of things," she told Charles, though she wasn't sure if he was awake or not. "Every time I had one of those dreams, I'd sleep for two or three days straight. Tiring dreams is not a valid diagnosis."

"You didn't know what you were doing?" His voice is sleepy, but he's there. They've been weaning him off the pain medication and it's not like it does a whole lot for the nerve pain or spasms anyway.

Amelia put the cigarette to his lips and he breathed it in, too tired after another day of rehab to move his arms. "What was I supposed to think? That I'd really gone to Peru? Or Nepal? Or Canada? That was a cold one. I started wearing shoes to bed after that, just in case."

"So you didn't disbelieve the dreams…"

"No, but it was kid logic: you get cold feet in a dream, next night you wear shoes to bed. It settled down by the time I was in high school, anyway. The dreams and the fatigue would only happen a few times a year." She kissed Charles above his eyebrow, near one of the scars from the halo brace. "You could do with a few days' sleep, but they'll be in at six tomorrow. See you in the afternoon."

"Good night, Amelia."

She put out her cigarette, shaking the ash from the tray out the window, and headed downstairs to get her coat. Most of the nurses hurried home in a group as soon as their shift was over, because it was a three block run back to the nurses' dormitory and there was safety in numbers. Amelia wasn't worried, though, despite being alone. The only time anyone had gone so far as to grab her, she'd simply teleported a hundred miles upstate and left the asshole there. In retrospect, she thought it would have been better to teleport out to sea, but it was cold and she didn't want to come back soaking wet. The rain tonight kept the potential muggers and rapists away, and she ran the three blocks home in peace.

\---

When she got into the building, Erik was sitting in the guest lounge again. It was the only place in the building where male visitors were allowed. Even so it was late enough that the retired nurse who manned the desk was looking askance at him.

"Oh, what is it now, Erik? Charles is slightly improved on yesterday, no change in diagnosis. Same as every other day."

"I'm not here to talk about him."

She took his elbow and hustled him to the other end of the guest lounge, where they wouldn't be heard. "And don't try to recruit me again, either. I said I'd give medical aid if someone couldn't go to a regular hospital, but that doesn't mean I agree with your cause. Leave me alone, okay?"

"You could do a lot of good, working with us."

"I don't want to take over the world. Nor do I want to seek out all the mutants and offer them shelter, so I'm not joining Charles, either."

"You're simply going to wait until they come for you?"

Amelia jabbed a finger in Erik's chest. He'd told her to call him Magneto, of all things, with some spiel about casting off human names, but all that had done was send her off to get his real name from Charles. "The very moment people start mobilising against mutants as a group, I'll be there. You know that. And until that moment, I'm going to live my life exactly how I want."

"You're fortunate to have that freedom, to look the same as other people. But it won't always protect you."

"I'm fortunate I'm not a Negro, or a starving child in China or a cripple, either, and you're not fighting for their freedom."

"They're –"

"Human, yes, I've heard it before. Most of them. I really don't understand why you think they'll all band together against us. It's not like people successfully band together against anything else."

"As soon as they saw us use our powers, the Americans and the Soviets tried to eliminate us. Instant co-operation. And look what happened to Charles."

"Charles has a slightly different view of things, Erik. I don't agree with him, either, but that was the military reacting to a militant group. You wore uniforms and flew around in a CIA-designed jet, for God's sake!"

"Charles has been sharing quite a lot, hasn't he?"

"You should go see him. I left the window unlocked – you could float up there, with your anti-telepathic helmet on."

That takes Erik's focus off her, finally. He nodded, stiffly. "Good evening, Miss Voght."

"And good night to you, too."

\---

Amelia's room was both small and shared, but she was rarely there except to sleep, so it didn't bother her. It was the only way she could afford to live in Manhattan, since she couldn't teleport a short distance like Manhattan to Staten Island or somewhere similar. At least her roommate was tolerable: she spent all her time either working or partying and seemed to need little sleep. She certainly wasn't going to tell tales to their residence manager if Amelia randomly vanished in the middle of the night.

Amelia hardly ever teleported in her sleep, these days. She rather missed it, if not the part where she appeared in a foreign country in her nightclothes. Her endurance was far better than it had been as a teenager, and she only needed a single sick day to recover. Shorter jaunts were barely tiring at all. What she really dreamed of, though, was to travel: in planes and busses and cars, not stealing a few hours under her own steam then snapping back to her previous location as if she was elastic. A nurse's salary wasn't huge, but it was a fairly good wage for a woman, and she liked the work. Her goal, though, was saving for that plane ticket. India first, perhaps, then Nepal and Iran and all the places she'd visited in dreams but never had the chance to know better. She spun the little toy globe that her nursing friends had given her for Christmas last year, and let her finger pick a place to stop: Greece. That's what she'd think about tonight, just in case her body decided to take her wandering.

\---

"Hello again, Charles." Amelia was working now, so she was very brisk. She stuck a thermometer in Charles' mouth, and rolled over the blood pressure monitor, processes he must find entirely familiar, by now.

*Hello, Amelia,* he projected, instead.

*Did Erik come to see you last night? He tried to recruit me again.*

Charles couldn't hide the flicker of disappointment, although his mental voice was as chirpy as ever. *I must have been asleep. So are you joining his Brotherhood?*

*I told him what I always tell him.* She wrapped the cuff around Charles' bicep and started inflating it.

*I'm sorry I told him you were a mutant, Amelia. I didn't mean to cause trouble.*

She noted down the reading and took out the thermometer before answering. "It's been good to meet other mutants, especially Azazel. It doesn't mean I'm going to join anyone's exclusive little club, though. Besides, you were delirious at the time."

Charles grimaced. It had been a bad infection, that one. Now that he was at the rehabilitation stage and moving around more, his general health had improved. "Amelia, the doctors said I should be able to go home once the rehabilitation course is completed, in another ten days."

"I'll miss your company, and that's not something I say to many patients."

"It's been a long ten months, but you've helped me a great deal. You don't want take sides, of course, but I was wondering if you might like a job? I'm still going to need help, and I'd much rather it was someone I know."

"You'd much rather it was a mutant, you mean. Sometimes you're as bad as Erik: the only difference is that you're a segregationist and he's determined to be in charge."

"Amelia –"

"I'm working. I'll talk to you later." She initialled his chart and walked away, angry in a way that she couldn't really name. It was true that Charles would need help, and it was true that he would rather someone he knew, but she was so sick of them both. She didn't mind the others – Mystique, fellow teleporter Azazel, Alex, Sean – but they fell in line behind their leaders. Amelia knew how to swallow down rage and humiliation in order to obey, from her nursing training, but that didn't mean she felt liking doing it recreationally, or politically. She didn't intend to be Emma Frost, either, who was rude and stand-offish and difficult, but obeyed anyway.

She continued her rounds, remembering to smile at the patients so she didn't get written up again for a "sullen demeanour". That really was humiliating.

\---

"Why didn't you teleport here?" Azazel asked her, leaning comfortably against the stone balustrades outside Charles's ridiculous mansion. He'd waited until the taxi left before wandering out, and Amelia had to wonder if it was Charles' idea to keep him hidden from outsiders, or Azazel's own preference.

"If I did, I'd teleport back home in an hour or two."

Azazel nodded. "I used to do that. Then one day my district was bombed by the Germans and everyone died. After that, I didn't go back anymore."

"There's nothing holding me back! Why can't I do that?" Amelia was suddenly furious with him and his eternally calm manner.

"Maybe you are used to the comfort. You are American. You fit in."

It took a week before she understood what Azazel had been saying. It wasn't anything as dramatic as a bombing, or even words, that made her let go of the comfort Azazel claimed she had. It was a single triumphant look from Charles.

"Will you come to Argentina with us? Mystique, Azazel and I?" Erik had asked her. "We have business we need to complete, and we could use an extra pair of hands."

"I think I'm needed here," Amelia had replied, being polite to spare Charles' feelings. As with most new paraplegics, he had not adjusted well to living at home, and still needed considerable assistance.

Charles didn't reply to either of them, but shot a look at Erik, and in that moment Amelia knew that she was a trophy to him, like any other conquered woman. All her lingering excitement of finding others like her fled in a moment: she never should have made herself dependent on his money, his power, his philosophies.

She walked off to her room and collected her small suitcase, and her money. Five seconds later, she was in Kathmandu, half a world away from everyone who knew her. She waited, carefully, but her power didn't drag her back to New York: nothing could, now.

The stars had never shone brighter, and if they seemed cold, well, that had never bothered Amelia.


End file.
